Vision-Dieter Glasses

The Vision-Dieter glasses were weight-loss eyeglasses, created by Arkansas entrepreneur John D. Miller who sold them for $19.95 each. They had a different lens for each eye: one brown and the other blue. Miller claimed that the different colors caused a low-level of confusion in a person's subconscious that led to a loss of appetite, and thus weight loss. In 1982 the U.S. attorney stopped the sale of the glasses because Miller hadn't registered them with the Food and Drug Administration. Also, there was no evidence they actually worked as a diet aid.

[Miller] came upon the idea for the appetite-inhibiting lenses, he said, in one of his supermarkets. He noted that customers were attracted to shelves by certain colors. "If people could be controlled by one color," he thought, "they could be decontrolled by another."

Perhaps tinted eyeglasses could reverse the attraction to food by affecting the subconscious, Miller hypothesized. And he went to work.

The experiments began with employees of one of his enterprises, the Miller Vision Centers. Soon the research was extended to his patients.

At first, the results were mixed. He had chosen the wrong colors. Then he hit upon crimson brown and royal blue.

"It's crazy. I can't tell you exactly how, but it works," Miller said.

Soon testimonial letters were coming into Miller's office by the dozens. In virtually every case, people who wore the glasses said they weren't eating as much. He conducted control experiments with the help of a psychologist and claimed a 97 percent success rate.